


Behind Blue Eyes

by Katefkndoes



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katefkndoes/pseuds/Katefkndoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What goes through Steve's head post-rebirth?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind Blue Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly unbeta'd save a quick read through by sparklyfiend, since it was just something that wouldn't get out of my head.

Steve likes to think that his reactions are natural, but since he hasn’t told anyone how he’s feeling, he’s basing that belief on his own opinion. Then again, even if he was to tell anyone just exactly what he was feeling he’d still be the only one – except Schmidt and really, there was no way he was sane – who had survived the procedure. So, no one would be able to determine precisely what the rational way to respond to a complete physical transformation should be.

Sure, at first it didn’t quite sink in. That wasn’t to say that he couldn’t appreciate that he was taller or that Peggy had gaped at him like he was a steak and she hadn’t eaten in a week. However, it just hadn't felt real.

Objectively, he could appreciate that he should be bursting with happiness and pride that the procedure had worked. But the truth was the whole project had gone to hell only minutes after he had been ‘reborn’. Erskine was dead. Philips didn’t want to know him. And he had no idea how to deal with the fact that he could bench press a motorcycle without breaking a sweat.

And things hadn’t gotten any better from there.

He’s sure that he shouldn’t wish that he’d never been picked for the damn assignment. In fact, that’s kind of the only thing he is certain of these days. He guesses that he should be glad that he’s aiding the war effort and not locked up like the experiment he knows the government see him as, but he can’t help but find dancing around in bright blue tights a little degrading.

He gets asked all the time, these days, what it’s like to have hundreds of women fawning over him but the truth is he hasn’t really experienced that. Well, he has, but he’s never really stopped to appreciate it because he’s just so used to girls ignoring him, that he’s never really developed the ability to deal with them practically throwing themselves at him. Even if women do approach him they lose interest in him pretty damn quickly.

The rebirth should have helped him fit in more with men if nothing else, but those who weren't intimidated by the size of his biceps made the usual jokes about a man in tights. Because of that he had become increasingly introverted and chose to spend more time hunched over his sketch book. But even his pencils feel foreign in his new hands.

The first time he knocked out a guy, really laid him out and didn’t just watch him chow down on cyanide, he still wasn’t certain of his own strength. And even if he hadn’t thrown a punch until the other guy had refused to back down it didn’t make him feel good when his fist collided with his assailant’s side and he heard the ribs break.

He threw up three times that night.

There’s a control that he has to maintain in his every action that's hard to explain to any normal person. Simple things like the force required to open up a door, or helping the USO girls move their trunks around, became like a lesson in self-control. Even things like walking up a flight of stairs without becoming winded are still a shock to him, and though he appreciates his new lung capacity he’s never really been allowed to test exactly what he can really do. Sure, they have him lifting motorcycles and ‘punching’ Hitler, but it’s rare for him to be left unattended, and even rarer for him to be allowed out in public with the exception of the shows.

Sometimes, he wonders whether the whole thing is a dream. Whether he’d been beaten up so badly one time that he’d slipped into a coma and is living out his fantasies while lying half-dead in a hospital bed. But rationally, he knows if this was all a dream he’d be out there fighting with the rest of the capable men.

His mother, he thinks, would cry if she could see him now, although whether out of pride for her child or fear of what he had done to himself was still up for debate. He wonders whether she would even recognize him, or whether she would walk past him on the street as though he was the ghost of the boy she’d watched grow up.

Such thoughts never fail to dampen his mood, and invariably turn his mind towards Bucky. He wonders whether Bucky could accept him, whether he could draw him into a warm hug like Bucky used to do back in Brooklyn, or whether he would step away and look at him with sad eyes. 

He had thought when he volunteered for the procedure that, it would be the making of him that, it would help him be the man that he’d always wanted to be. 

The truth of the matter is that he doesn’t even recognize his own reflection anymore, so he has no clue how he’s supposed to find Steve Rogers.


End file.
